{"id":39551,"date":"2026-06-27T08:05:18","date_gmt":"2026-06-27T08:05:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/39551\/"},"modified":"2026-06-27T08:05:18","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T08:05:18","slug":"toowoomba-mum-finds-side-hustle-folding-baskets-of-washing-to-buy-family-car","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/39551\/","title":{"rendered":"Toowoomba mum finds side hustle folding baskets of washing to buy family car"},"content":{"rendered":"

Danica Slack is busy folding an ever-growing pile of laundry.<\/p>\n

“It’s just chockers, full of baskets in here,” Ms Slack said, laughing.<\/p>\n

The Toowoomba mum has set herself the goal of folding 1,300 baskets of clean laundry to pay off her car’s finance and buy a seven-seater big enough for her family.<\/p>\n

In the two weeks since the 26-year-old posted on social media about her side hustle, she has folded 200 baskets \u2014 each worth $10.<\/p>\n

“Everyone went crazy,” Ms Slack said.<\/p>\n

\"young<\/p>\n

Danica Slack is folding baskets of laundry at $10 each to save up for a bigger car for her children. (ABC Southern Qld: Grace Nakamura)<\/p>\n

“There’s actually some mornings I wake up and there’s already a few baskets on my front step.”<\/p>\n

Ms Slack has four kids, including 10-month-old twins, who she drives around to kindy and various appointments in a small sedan.<\/p>\n

“Our twins are upgrading from capsules to actual car seats, which won’t fit, so I need a car big enough \u2026 otherwise we’ll be stuck at home,” Ms Slack said.<\/p>\n

She worked out she needed to pay off $13,000 in the next three months to be able to upgrade by the time the twins moved into car seats.<\/p>\n

‘Arms of steel’<\/p>\n

Teetering towers of towels, stacks of hi-vis vests and neatly arranged piles of T-shirts and jeans grow higher as Ms Slack makes her way through the backlog of baskets.<\/p>\n

\"woman<\/p>\n

Many of the clients have been other busy parents or carers. (ABC Southern Qld: Grace Nakamura)<\/p>\n

She is no Marie Kondo, but there’s a method to the madness.<\/p>\n

She has mastered the pesky fitted sheet but said jeans were her favourite item to fold.<\/p>\n

“Least favourite would probably be G-strings,” Ms Slack said.<\/p>\n

“It’s like folding a bit of rope.”<\/p>\n

She said she did not expect her venture to “blow up so much” and had been inundated with demand.<\/p>\n

“The majority is just busy mums that have lots of kids and then there’s people with sick children or sick partners or disabilities,” Ms Slack said.<\/p>\n

“Even people that just work and are too busy.<\/p>\n

“I had people that don’t even need their washing folded but they would message me, get me to fold their clothes just so they could support the challenge.”<\/p>\n

\"young<\/p>\n

Fellow mum Georgia Strohfeld says the laundry is a “never-ending cycle” in her house. (ABC Southern Qld: Grace Nakamura)<\/p>\n

Her friend Georgia Strohfeld, also a mum, said laundry was a “never-ending cycle”.<\/p>\n

She said she had been dropping hers off to Ms Slack whenever she had a fresh basket, which was “basically all the time”.<\/p>\n

“Not everyone has the time or the energy to want to do that, especially after a long day of work,” Ms Strohfeld said.<\/p>\n

“I wish I had her determination \u2026 and her arms of steel.”Danica’s journey<\/p>\n

Ms Slack said it was her own experience with postnatal depression and homelessness that led her to want to help other mums.<\/p>\n

Two years ago, Ms Slack and her partner were living in Bargara, just outside Bundaberg.<\/p>\n

They were in a serious car crash, in which the passenger of the other vehicle died.<\/p>\n

Ms Slack found out a week later she was pregnant with twins.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Danica Slack has four children, including 10-month-old twins. (ABC Southern Qld: Grace Nakamura)<\/p>\n

“Because of the trauma, I wasn’t working,” she said.<\/p>\n

“So, we ended up homeless because I couldn’t afford the rent and so we moved [to Toowoomba] and started a cleaning business to keep a roof over our heads.”<\/p>\n

After three months “sleeping on people’s floors with the kids”, an accessible-housing organisation put the young family up in a motel.<\/p>\n

From there, they were approved for a rental, where they have been living since.<\/p>\n

Ms Slack said the financial stress was why she turned to unorthodox ways to make money, like folding washing.<\/p>\n

“That allows me to stay at home and care for the twins, not rush them back into daycare,” she said.<\/p>\n

A dream to help other mums<\/p>\n

With the success she has had so far, Ms Slack is hoping to find a way to help other mums start similar businesses.<\/p>\n

“I want to build an app where I get mums that want to stay at home but also make extra income,” she said.<\/p>\n

\"danica<\/p>\n

Danica Slack says she wanted to help take weight off the shoulders of other busy mums. (ABC Southern Qld: Grace Nakamura)<\/p>\n

For now, she is tackling her 214th basket of laundry \u2014 a repeat client who will pick up their neatly folded clothes at the end of the day.<\/p>\n

As for her own family’s laundry?<\/p>\n

“I’ve actually had to put a pause on my own laundry at the moment, just for my sanity,” she said.<\/p>\n

“I might find some other mum that wants extra cash and pay her to fold mine.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Danica Slack is busy folding an ever-growing pile of laundry. “It’s just chockers, full of baskets in here,”…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39552,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[22,21,32121,32123,32124,32125,32126,32122],"class_list":["post-39551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-austrlia","tag-danica-slack","tag-seven-seater","tag-side-hustle","tag-toowoomba-mother","tag-toowoomba-mum","tag-washing-folding"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39551\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}